BANGI: The authorities handling the investigation and search for missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 met more than 40 relatives of passengers on the plane that is believed to have gone down in the southern Indian Ocean on Wednesday.
The team included Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman (pic), Chief of Air Force Tan Sri Rodzali Daud, the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to China Tan Sri Ong Ka Ting, China’s Ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang and a British Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) team.
They arrived between 9am and 9.45am at the Bangi-Putrajaya Hotel where the next-of-kin, mainly Chinese nationals, are staying.
It is learnt that the relatives will attend a closed-door briefing on the developments on the search for MH370 which disappeared on March 8.
It is learnt that the briefing would take about two hours and that it would be brought live to relatives of other passengers in China via teleconferencing.
After the disappearance of the flight, a multinational search was mounted for the aircraft, first in the South China Sea and then, after it was learnt that the plane had veered off course, along two corridors – the northern corridor stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand and the southern corridor, from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.
Following an unprecedented type of analysis of satellite data, United Kingdom satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) concluded that flight MH370 flew along the southern corridor and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth, Australia.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak then announced on March 24, seventeen days after the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200 aircraft, that flight MH370 “ended in the southern Indian Ocean”.
The search continues there, having entered its 26th day Wednesday. – BERNAMA
Post time 2-4-2014 02:52 PM
